Have You a Wound to Heal?

(A poem by Macrina Wiederkehr)

Once there was a wound

It was no ordinary wound

It was my wound

We had lived together long.

I yearned to be free of this wound

I wanted the bleeding to stop

Yet if the truth be known

I felt a strange kind of  gratitude

for this wound

It had made me

tremendously open to grace

vulnerable to God’s mercy.

A beautiful believing in me

    that I have named Faith

    kept growing, daring me

    to reach for what I could not see.

This wound had made me open.

I was ready for grace

And so one day, I reached.

There I was thick in the crowd

    bleeding and believing

    and I reached.

At first I reached

    for what I could see

    the fringe of a garment,

But my reaching didn’t stop there

    for Someone reached back into me.

A grace I couldn’t see

    flowed through me.

A power I didn’t understand

    began to fill the depths of me.

Trembling I was called forth

    to claim my wholeness.

The bleeding had left me.

The believing remained

And strange as this may sound

I have never lost my gratitude

    for the wound

    that made me so open

    to grace.

(From Prayers of Your Heart:  Prayers and Reflections)

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